"When Confronted By a Criminal, You're
Back on the U.S. Frontier"
By Charley Reese

The easiest way to resolve, in your own mind,
the gun-control debate is to take this little test.

1. Do you believe that you have a right to
live?

2. Do you believe that your spouse and
children have a right to live?

3. If someone is threatening to kill you and
your family, do you think that you have a right to defend
yourself?

That's the objective, yes-or-no part of the
quiz. Now here is one final essay question:

How will you defend yourself and your family
if you are confronted by an armed intruder or intruders?

You could call 911 unless, as often happens
these days, the intruders have taken the trouble to cut
your telephone wires before they kick your door down. But
if you did get the call off, you still have a problem:

The intruders are there in your house, and the
police aren't.

The sad fact is that, because of logistics,
police can't protect you. In more than 99 percent of the
cases, by the time the police even get called -- and
certainly by the time they arrive -- the crime has
already been committed.

The hard truth is that, when you are
confronted by a criminal, you're in the same situation
today you would have been in if you had lived alone on an
isolated ranch on the American frontier. There's nobody
at the dance but you and the criminal. You have to fight.
You win, you live; you lose, you die. Simple as that. No
alternative unless you want to depend on your begging and
some thug's mercy. But in serious encounters, by the time
the cavalry gets there, there will be dead and wounded
lying around. The question you have to answer is: Do you
want to be among the dead or among the living?

Now you may suppose that you are a glib talker
and when some crack-crazed thug sticks a gun in your
face, you can reason with him. That's a very far-fetched
supposition. I would bet on the thug. Any honest street
cop will tell you that the predators roaming today are
far more dangerous than even mob hit men of the past. The
hit men would never kill without a reason. Today's thugs
kill on a whim for no rational reason at all. And many of
them will kill everyone there, including babies and
children.

The neo-totalitarians -- sometimes known as
the gun-control crowd -- will repeat the big lie that a
gun kept for self-protection is more likely to injure you
or your family than a criminal. The flawed study that is
based on was discredited years ago.

If you take a gun to a gunfight, you may not
win; if you don't, you will surely lose. Credible studies
by respected scholars with no bias show what common sense
tells you -- that thousands of Americans every day save
themselves from criminal harm by using a firearm, most of
the time without having to shoot.

To me, there is no more outrageous insult or
bigger example of stupidity than a government that is
such a gross failure at preventing criminal, armed
attacks on the population that it would take the position
that the answer is to disarm the future victims. I take
it as a given that any politician who proposes to deny
honest people the means to defend their lives and the
lives of their children is too evil or too stupid to
tolerate in public office.

Some guy once wrote that a characteristic of
Southerners is that they take things personally. I know
that's true in my case. When I hear some politician talk
gun control, I think, "You (expletive deleted),
you're endangering my children."

You have a right to own a firearm. Don't let
anyone take that right away from you. Use it.

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